Thursday, October 7, 2010

Athy's New Parish Team

On the Sunday set aside by some as a day of protest when Sunday Mass
throughout the island of Ireland was to be boycotted, Bishop Eamonn Walsh came
to our local Church of St. Michaels to formally present the new parish team to
the local parishioners.Our Parish Church,
as it has been on Sundays in recent times, was about a quarter full, the small
attendance owing nothing to the call for the Mass boycott.This year for the first time the entire
parish team, including the Parish Priest and curate, have been replaced at the
same time.Bishop Walsh in his homily
referred to the recent events which prompted the change in parish personnel
without throwing any light on what happened.

I have enormous sympathy for Fr. Michael Murtagh, our Parish Priest
of a few months, whom I understand found himself the subject of complaints by
some people.He was effectively removed
from his new parish because of those complaints and I am sorry for the manner
of his departure.The upheaval also saw
the departure of Breda Carroll, the pastoral worker and Fr. Joe McDonald whose
Sunday sermons were invariably thought provoking and never dull. Fr. Gerry Tanham is our new Parish Priest,
having transferred from Malahide in north County Dublin where he was Parish
Priest for some years past.Fr. Paul
O’Driscoll joins the parish from Arklow, while Aine Egan is the new pastoral
worker.

During Sunday’s ceremony Fr. Tanham spoke briefly of the role of the
clergy in providing spiritual nourishment and facilitating social bonding
within the parish community.I was
particularly taken with his latter comment, opening as it did an avenue of
exploration for a community which has been lacking in business leadership for
so long.What you may ask can a Parish
Priest do to rectify that omission?Perhaps nothing directly, but indirectly the parish community made up of
long term residents, coupled with new arrivals who have come to Athy over the
last few years, might be best able to accelerate the bonding process which is needed
to energise the wider local community.

Bishop Walsh spoke of the parish team being engaged in ‘stimulating the spiritual nerve’ of the
local community and the individuals within it.He did not go so far as Fr. Tanham’s call for social bonding but between
the two stated objectives there can be resurgence and a re-awakening in all
aspects of community life in Athy.

We will have an interesting visitor to the town on Friday, 22nd
October who may have something to say on the reawakening of the Irish nation, when
the Shackleton Autumn School hosts a lecture by historian, biographer, critic
and controversial political commentator Fintan O’Toole, whose latest book ‘Ship of Fools’ I read this
weekend.In it he analyses the ‘Celtic Tiger’ and the sweetheart deals,
backhanders and bribery which were part and parcel of the property boom and the
prosperity we then enjoyed.As part of
his review of Ireland’s so called economic miracle he has made some interesting
comments on the slow death of Catholic Ireland which had dominated the personal
values of the majority of the population from the middle of the 19th
century.O’Toole refers to the Catholic
Church as ‘a corrupt institution’
which lost its authority following the various Church scandals, leaving no deeply
rooted civic morality in its place.The
Irish people, he claims, for too long identified morality with religion and
were left moorless when the Catholic Church was cast adrift.We can expect an interesting talk from Fintan
O’Toole when he appears in the Town Hall on 22nd October.

That same Sunday afternoon as Bishop Walsh spoke in St. Michaels the
town was alive with activities arranged for Discovery Day in Athy.It was a wonderful occasion organised by The
SHINE Committee, with a range of events and activities which demonstrated how
well provided Athy is with a host of sporting clubs and associations.I had the privilege of meeting Athy’s Roses
of Tralee over the weekend, when both Charmaine Kenny and Clare Kambamettu
played a part in ‘Discover Athy’.Both are wonderful ambassadors for the town
which has gained enormous publicity from their successes and from the success
of the recent National Ploughing Championships which for the third year in
succession will return to Athy as part of the 80th anniversary
celebration of the National Ploughing Association.The central role of Athy man J.J. Bergin in
founding the N.P.A. is well documented and it was he who arranged the first
ploughing match on the Coursetown farmlands in 1931 which subsequently lead to
the setting up of the N.P.A.

Athy has much to offer and as shown by men such as the late J.J.
Bergin has much to benefit from a more participative community involvement in
the social, cultural and commercial life of the town.Fr. Tanham’s remarks last Sunday made me
realise that ‘spiritual nourishing’ and ‘social bonding’ may not be necessarily
mutually exclusive.